Re: Ernst Bloch on Jazz, Kitsch and Colportage (Corrected for omitte

["Ralph Dumain" <rdumain@xxxxxxx>]

-----Original Message-----
From: L Spencer <L.SPENCER@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: frankfurt-school@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<frankfurt-school@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: L.Goode@xxxxxxxxxx <L.Goode@xxxxxxxxxx>; G.Ursell@xxxxxxxxxx
<G.Ursell@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thursday, May 06, 1999 10:56 AM
Subject: Ernst Bloch on Jazz, Kitsch and Colportage (Corrected for omitte


>Bloch's few (dismissive) words on Jitterbug, Boogie-Woogie and other
>jazz fashions have started up a veritable hornet's nest on this list.
>But let's try to refrain from trading labels, and worse, trading
>insults.


Far be it from me to stand in the way of scholarly discussion.  However, one
should not forgot that you did not receive a single response from anyone
else seriously engaging your concern.   Under the circumstances, I could not
keep silent.  But of course, from now I could keep up the pretense of
scholarly neutrality and decorum, so at variance with the original purposes
of critical theory, so that we can all safely maintain the illusion that
_we_ are all too sophisticated to succumb to the same social pressures that
dominate the rest of society, i.e. the unlettered consumers of popular
culture whose tastes aren't as refined as ours.

>I mentioned Adorno only to distinguish Bloch's approach from Adorno.
>Adorno was an accompanished musician and composer, a very serious
>musicologist and someone who has profoundly shaped the sociology of
>music. His writings on jazz are not his strongest peices of criticism
>but they represent a thought-through theoretical response or
>analysis. I am not defending the position he adopts. It is not one I
>agree with. But responding at all intelligently to Adorno requires
>that one appreciate the seriousness of the thought that has gone into
>his analysis.


To allow Adorno such leeway is to insure that your question never gets
answered.  But me my guest, grovel all you like.

>Now, the case of Bloch's remarks is somewhat different.
>
>(1) I quoted a few lines which stand alone in the context of Bloch's
>treatment of dance, and of Isadora Duncan in particular. This was not
>an extended analysis. Simply a vehement throw-away line. Still I am
>taken aback by the vehemence of Bloch's attack.


Once you knock him and his buddy off their pedestal, you will find the
answers to your consternation not so hard to come by.

>(2) This is not simply under a blanket condemnation of popular art or
>music. Bloch wrote extensively on fairytales and folktales, he
>attempts to rescue utopian impulses from poplar adventure stories
>such as those of Karl May and from the popular romance or exaggerated
>tale under the category of "Colportage". In "Heritage of Our Times"
>Bloch attacks the what he terms "Kitsch" as strongly as he defends
>the utopian dream-impulse within "Colportage. He also writes an
>unblinking account of the degradation of the unemployed proletariat
>in the dance-marathons of the depression. There is a great deal to be
>learnt from Bloch as a committed cultural analyst. But why no hint of
>any scintilla of the human within the very physical (dance) responses
>to jazz?

Why not indeed?  Gee, I wonder.

>This is the same Bloch who was so passionate a defender of
>Expressionism against the strictures of Lukacs and other cultural
>commissars. Mine is a serious question.

To which the answer will be deafening silence.

>Not an attack on Bloch. Nor
>an attempt to defend my own enthusiasm for dance. I dont feel in the
>least threatened in that. Dance and Bloch are both important to me.
>That's not schizophrenia. But despite my very great admiration for
>Bloch I do not understand his blindness (and anger) in this area.


The rest is silence.

>It may be that he is offended by the uninhibited enthusiasm within
>jazz and the alcohol-induced "Rausch" (ecstasy/intoxication). It may
>be that jazz-frenzy is too close a parody of divine madness. I dont
>know. I am trying to be kind and to look for a serious way of reading
>this difficulty.


One should not spoil a punchline such as this by seeking to explain it.
What remains unspoken here above all is that all this folderol is predicated
on the reception of  black art forms by white people, in the USA or in
Europe, i.e., what _they_ make of it all.  What these forms meant to the
people who created them is never allowed a voice.  I guess the subaltern
can't speak after all.

>" Man is to be soiled and his brain emptied"

How thoroughly Aryan, the Germans Hitler and Rosenberg could not have said
it better.  And this is just how they all think: you must go out of your
mind to come to your senses, wild abandon, giving into impulse is
anti-intellectual, rejecting one's brains.  This says everything,
everything.  The keys to the kingdom are jingling in your asshole.  Whereas
there has never been one black person on this planet, anywhere at any time,
who has equated the body with mindlessness and surrender of intellect.

"My body is intelligent."  -- Josephine Baker

Ralph Dumain
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